Monthly Archives: May 2022

Music

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)

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Read­ers of my gen­er­a­tion may recog­nise the fol­low­ing com­mon social trope from teenage gath­er­ings and house par­ties. As music plays, ring-pulls are released from cans of lager, and friend­ly ban­ter fills the room, in a dim-lit cor­ner, a long-haired layabout is skin­ning up a joint on the near­est album cov­er, which always seems to be Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. It per­haps wasn’t always The Dark Side of the Moon, but as a meme it fits pret­ty well into this snap­shot of the­mat­ic mem­o­ry. Mind you, in the era I was attend­ing teenage gath­er­ings, at the start of the eight­ies, the album was already get­ting quite old (it had been released in 1973) but it had turned into an endur­ing and per­pet­u­al­ly high-sell­ing album that every­one (the lads any­way) seemed to relate to.

It was the Floyd’s eighth stu­dio album, con­ceived and devel­oped over years as a con­cept album explor­ing var­ied themes such as con­flict, greed, time, death and men­tal ill­ness, and large­ly inspired by the band’s ardu­ous lifestyle and the grow­ing men­tal health prob­lems suf­fered by for­mer band mem­ber Syd Bar­rett (who left the group in 1968). Pri­mar­i­ly devel­oped dur­ing live per­for­mances, the band added new mate­r­i­al dur­ing two ses­sions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Stu­dios in Lon­don.

It’s high­ly exper­i­men­tal: the group incor­po­rat­ed mul­ti­track record­ing, tape loops, ana­logue syn­the­sis­ers, and snip­pets from inter­views with the band’s road crew and var­i­ous philo­soph­i­cal quo­ta­tions. The engi­neer was Alan Par­sons, and he was respon­si­ble for much of the son­ic feel to the album (not least by recruit­ing the singer Clare Tor­ry, who appears on The Great Gig in the Sky). It works extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well, as a whole as much as its indi­vid­ual parts. This actu­al­ly takes me back to anoth­er teenage meme, that of bod­ies lying around a dark­ened room, in a pleas­ant fug, and lis­ten­ing to the album in its entire­ty.

Here’s the intro to the album put effec­tive­ly to video by a fan (cred­it: Marc-André Ranger)…enjoy! Now, where are those Rizlas?

Pink Floyd
The icon­ic album cov­er, by Storm Thorg­er­son
Film, TV, and Theatre

Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

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Some months ago here at OGOTS Tow­ers, in a piece on Walt Whitman’s O Cap­tain! My Cap­tain (see here), we looked at that won­der­ful role por­trayed by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Soci­ety: the uber-inspi­ra­tional teacher, John Keat­ing. Well, this week we’re look­ing at anoth­er stal­wart of the fic­tion­al school­room, one Charles Edward Chip­ping AKA “Mr Chips”.

Good­bye, Mr. Chips is a 1939 roman­tic dra­ma based on the 1934 novel­la of the same name by James Hilton. The film is about Mr Chip­ping (Robert Donat), a much-loved elder­ly school teacher at Brook­field pub­lic school, who looks back at his career and per­son­al life over the decades. We learn about his rise through the teach­ing ranks, his friend­ship with Ger­man teacher Max Stae­fel (Paul Hein­reid) and his trag­i­cal­ly short mar­riage to Kathy (Greer Gar­son), who dies in child­birth along with their baby. From there­on in, Chips’ life is devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to the school and he devel­ops a rap­port with gen­er­a­tions of pupils, even­tu­al­ly teach­ing the sons and grand­sons of many of his ear­li­er pupils.

Although he osten­si­bly retires in 1914, Chips is soon enjoined to return as inter­im head­mas­ter due to the short­age of teach­ers because of the Great War. Dur­ing a bomb­ing attack by a Ger­man Zep­pelin, Chips insists that the boys keep on trans­lat­ing their Latin, and to the great amuse­ment of his pupils, choos­es the sto­ry of Julius Cae­sar’s bat­tles against the Ger­man­ic tribes. Now there’s stiff upper lip!

As the war drags on though, every Sun­day in chapel Chips reads aloud into the school’s Roll of Hon­our the names of the many for­mer boys and teach­ers who have died in the war. It’s a poignant scene (that you can see below). Upon dis­cov­er­ing that Max Stae­fel has died fight­ing on the Ger­man side, he reads out his name, too. “Fun­ny read­ing his name out with the oth­ers, after all, he was an ene­my”, says one school­boy to anoth­er after­wards. “One of Chips’ ideas I sup­pose” his mate says, “he’s got lots of fun­ny ideas like that”.

Chips retires per­ma­nent­ly in 1918, but con­tin­ues liv­ing near­by. He is on his deathbed in 1933 when he over­hears his col­leagues talk­ing about him. He responds, “I thought I heard you say it was a pity – a pity I nev­er had any chil­dren. But you’re wrong. I have! Thou­sands of them, thou­sands of them.. and all.. boys”.

Robert Donat as Mr Chips